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The Psychology of Selling
Both types of salespeople can sell a lot more if they take advantage of the Psychology of Activated Selling. The biggest long-term winners with the most loyal following and customer base will almost always be the Trumps’ or Sanders’.
If you put the elements of a sales letter or video in the wrong order, sales will tank. If you’re not pushing the right emotional sales activators at exactly the right time, the conversion rate will be pretty terrible.
In person or on the phone, it’s all about pushing the right buttons while people are in the process of confirming that they identify with you.
The point is, in order to start getting more subscribers and sales, you need to understand that people are going to BUY YOU and they want to know that you get why they behave the way they do, what they’re thinking, and be certain what they are buying is going to work for them.
You can use these psychological activators in your sales letters, blog posts, newsletters and more. You can use them to get more subscribers, get sales, get referrals … or whatever else you need to grow your business.
Sounds good, right?
Sales Activator #1 : Touch their Fear
Fear is an incredibly powerful motivator. You’ll see everyone from marketers to politicians to bosses to parents using fear to get people to take some specific action. They do it because it works.
Fear is the activator of the flight/flight/freeze response in nature.
Salespeople, like politicians, can give doses of fear in large quantities and screw up everything. And this happens a great deal. If I don’t buy cable or DirecTV, my life will not likely end and it would be tough to scare me into buying once you inappropriately attempt to touch my fear button.
No! What you do is lightly touch the fear activator to make a big impact.
Here’s one proven method of utilizing fear.
Create a Fear of Missing Out
This specific fear is more prevalent today than it ever has been in the past.
In fact, the phrase (fear of missing out) has become so popular recently that it has its own acronym: FOMO. Typically this comes into play when people can’t stop looking at their smartphones, because they have a fear of missing out on some Facebook post, pop culture trend, or even an invitation to go out.
Sadly or pleasantly … this fear is the easiest to manipulate for good or bad intention.
You have a good intention?
Take this natural fear and funnel it into your sales system by creating an offer that’s somehow scarce. For example:
- Limit the offer to a set number of people. For example, perhaps you set up a membership site with a strict membership limit of just 200 people. Or you can offer a bonus or discount to the next 10 people who order now.
- Offer a discount or bonus for a limited amount of time. For example, you can offer a 50% discount that ends in 72 hours.There are a lot of different ways to heighten the sense of scarcity, boost urgency and in general bring the FOMO into awareness. These include:
- Coupons.
- Discount sales.
- Flash sales.
- Dime sales (the price goes up every day or after every purchase).
- Early bird offers.
- Introductory special rates.
- Holiday sales.
- Grand opening sales.
I could go on with this list. In all cases, the offer is somehow limited. This creates a fear of missing out on a great deal, which, in turn, boosts your conversion rate. This is true whether you are online or face to face. It makes no difference.
There are other ways to wisely and effectively touch fear …
Remind People of Their Fears
One of the best examples of this comes from the marketing you see from insurance companies. Basically, they get prospects to imagine what it would be like if the spouse dies … and they didn’t have insurance.
It’s a very real scenario that happens every day. There’s good reason to be concerned!
No matter what you’re marketing or selling, you can remind people of what might happen if they don’t order now. For example:
- If you choose to do nothing and leave this sales page, you won’t lose the weight. The ridicule will continue. People will give you disapproving looks when you’re out on the street. You’ll hate what you see when you look in the mirror.
- This problem is not going to get better if you ignore it. Those few fleas you see on your dog now will multiply. Soon your entire house could easily be infested. Most people don’t know that fleas can even infiltrate the carpet, the furniture and then your bed.
Simple enough?
Highlight a scarce offer or remind people of their fears, and you’ll see a boost to your sales and conversion rates.
Now, the next conversion-boosting triggers …
